“I do, indeed. My associates know where I am, ladies and gentlemen. Should anything happen to me, they would be most displeased, and I believe the equipment we’ve secured for you is an ample indication of the resources with which they might choose to express that displeasure.”
He smiled, and a strange, wild delight filled him as other officers glared at him. Why, he was actually enjoying this! Odd—he’d never suspected he might be an adrenaline junkie. Still, it was probably time to apply the sugarcoating before someone allowed fear or anger to swamp his judgment . . . such as it was.
“Come now, ladies and gentlemen! As I just said, and as I’ve told you many times before, we want—need—for this operation to succeed, and it won’t if your force is battered to bits in a pitched battle before your search and destroy teams can even go after the locals! My associates haven’t been idle, I assure you. The moment they discovered the Bolo’s presence, they began formulating a plan to deal with it.”
“Deal with a Bolo?” Granger snorted. “That’d be a pretty neat trick, if you could do it. In case you haven’t noticed, Mister Scully, Bolos aren’t exactly noted for being easy to `deal’ with!”
“Ah, but their command personnel are another matter,” Osterwelt said softly, and Granger gave him a sudden sharp, coldly speculative glance.
“Explain,” Matucek said curtly, and Osterwelt folded his hands on the table top and settled himself comfortably in his chair.
“Certainly, General. First, allow me to point out that the Bolo in question is eighty years old. No doubt it remains a formidable fighting machine, yet it’s only a Mark XXIII, while your Golems are based on the Mark XXIV. Your vehicles may lack psychotronics, but the Bolo’s weapons, defensive systems, and circuitry are eighty years out of date. Even if your Golems were required to engage it head on, my associates assure me that you would have something like an eighty percent chance of victory.”
Someone snorted his derision, and Osterwelt smiled.
“I agree,” he told the snorter. “It’s much easier for people who aren’t risking their own hides to pontificate on the probable outcome of an engagement with a Bolo. I think if you run the data on the Mark XXIII/B you may find they’re closer to correct than first impressions might suggest, but the best outcome of all would be for you not to have to fight it at all.”
“Like I say, a neat trick if you can do it,” Granger repeated, but her voice was more intent, and her eyes were narrow. Colonel Granger, Osterwelt reflected, was the only one of Matucek’s officers who might have asked the wrong questions in the “general’s” place. It was fortunate she was the sort of field commander who habitually left logistics and contract negotiations to her superiors.
“Indeed it would, Colonel Granger, and I believe my associates have come up with a very neat answer to the problem. You see, when you assault the planet, the Bolo will be inactive.”
“Inactive?” Granger sat up straight in her chair. “And just how will you pull that off, Mister Scully?”
“The answer is in your download from my associates, Colonel. I confess, I was a bit surprised by it, but now that I’ve had a chance to study it, I have complete faith that it will succeed.”
“Do you, now? I’m so happy for you. Unfortunately, we’re the ones who’re going to be sticking our necks out,” Granger pointed out coldly.
“Not alone, Colonel. I anticipated a certain amount of shock on your part, and I don’t blame you for it in the least. Obviously I can’t absolutely guarantee that my associates’ plan will work, but I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is when I say I believe it will.”
“How?” Matucek asked.
“By accompanying you on the raid,” Osterwelt said simply. Someone started to laugh, but Osterwelt’s raised hand cut the sound off at birth. “In order for you to assault the planet, all three of your ships will have to enter Santa Cruz orbit. And, as I’m sure you all know, a Bolo—even one eighty years old—has an excellent chance of picking off a starship under those circumstances. True?” Heads nodded, and he shrugged. “Very well. I will accompany you aboard this very ship to demonstrate my faith in my associates and their plan. If the Bolo gets you, it will also get me. Now, unless you know of some more convincing demonstration of sincerity I might make, I suggest that we review the aforesaid plan and then get on with our own planning.”
—12—
Nike’s after Hellbore turret altered its angle of train with a soft hum, barely perceptible through the background thunder of the plunging waterfall. The shift in position was small, but sufficient to adjust for the sinking sun and preserve the shade in which Paul Merrit sat. A corner of the captain’s mind noted the unasked-for courtesy, but most of his attention was on the dancing interplay of sunlight and shadowed water as he reeled in his lure. Ripples spread outward downstream from his float, like ranging bars on a fire control screen that pinpointed the big leopard-trout’s location.
Merrit finished reeling in his line, then sat up straight in the folding chair and snapped the tip of the rod forward. The glittering lure—leopard-trout liked bright, shiny prey—arced hissingly through the air, then seemed to slow suddenly. It dropped within a half meter of where the trout had broken the surface to take the fly, and Merrit worked his rod gently, tweaking the lure into motion to tempt his quarry.
It didn’t work. The meter-long trout (assuming it was still in the vicinity) treated his efforts with the disdain they deserved, and the captain chuckled softly as he began to reel the line in once more.
“This does not appear to represent an efficient method of food gathering,” a soprano voice remarked over an external speaker, and Merrit’s chuckle turned louder.
“It’s not supposed to be, Nike. It’s supposed to be fun.”
“Fun,” the Bolo repeated. “I see. You have now been occupied in this pursuit for three hours, nine minutes, and twelve seconds, Standard Reckoning, without the successful capture of a single fish. Clearly the total lack of success thus far attendant upon the operation constitutes `fun.’ ”
“Sarcasm is not a Bololike trait,” Merrit replied. He finished winding in the line, checked his lure, and made another cast. “Do I cast aspersions on your hobbies?”
“I do not cast aspersions; I make observations.” The Bolo’s soft laugh rippled over the speaker.
“Sure you do.” Merrit reached down for his iced drink and sipped gratefully. The weather—as always on Santa Cruz—was hot and humid, but a Mark XXIII Bolo made an excellent fishing perch. His folding chair was set up on the missile deck, twenty meters above the ground, and Nike had parked herself on the brink of the cliff over which the river poured in a glass-green sheet. She was far enough back to avoid any risk that the cliff might collapse—not a minor consideration for a vehicle whose battle weight topped fifteen thousand tons—but close enough to catch the soothing breeze that blew up out of the valley below. Spray from the sixty-meter waterfall rode the gentle wind, occasionally spattering Nike’s ceramic appliqués with crystal-beaded rainbows and cooling the jungle’s breath as it caressed Merrit’s bare, bronzed torso.
“The true object of the exercise, Nike, is less to catch fish than to enjoy just being,” he said as he set his glass back down.
“Being what?”
“Don’t be a smartass. You’re the poet. You know exactly what I mean. I’m not being anything in particular, just . . . being.”
“I see.” A lizard cat’s coughing cry rippled out of the dense foliage across the river, and another cat’s answer floated down from further upstream. One of Nike’s multibarreled gatling railguns trained silently out towards the source of the sounds, just in case, but she made no mention of it to her commander. She waited while he cast his lure afresh, then spoke again.
“I do not, of course, possess true human-equivalent sensory abilities. My sensors note levels of ambient radiation, precipitation, wind velocity, and many other factors, but the output is reported to me as observational, not experiential, data. Nonetheless, I compute that this is a lovely day.”
“That it is, O pearl of my heart. That it is.” Merrit worked his lure carefully back along an eddy, prospecting for bites. “Not like the world I grew up on, and a bit too warm, but lovely.”
“My data on Helicon is limited, but from the information I do possess, I would surmise that `a bit too warm’ understates your actual feelings by a considerable margin, Commander.”
“Not really. Humans are adaptable critters, and it’s been a while since I was last on Helicon. I’ll admit I could do with a good cold front, though. And,” his voice turned wistful, “I wish I could show you Helicon’s glacier fields or a good snow storm. Santa Cruz is beautiful. Hot and humid, maybe, but a beautiful, living planet. But snow, Nike—snow has a beauty all its own, and I wish I could show it to you.”